A Separation

Introduction

A Separation is an Iranian film, with
English subtitles, written and directed by Asghar Farhadi. It was
released in March 2011. It won several international awards
including a British Independent Film Award for Best Foreign
Independent Film in 2011 and several at the 2011 Berlin
International Film Festival. In 2012 it won an Oscar and a Golden
Globe for the Best Foreign Language Film of the Year. A
Separation has gathered much critical acclaim and is the first
Iranian film to win an Oscar. The film deals with marital breakup
in a middle class Iranian family made up of husband Nader, his wife
Simin, their daughter Termeh and Nader’s aging father, who lives
with them and is suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease. The director’s
real life daughter plays the eleven year-old Termeh.

The Film

The film begins with a long single camera shot in
which Nader and Simin are at the divorce court putting their
respective cases to an unseen judge. Simin is petitioning for
divorce on the grounds that her husband will not agree to leave
Iran with her and their daughter to begin a new life in another
country, where she and her daughter would have better opportunities
to work and study as women. Nader explains that he cannot leave
Iran as he is duty bound to care for his elderly father who is
suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease and who needs twenty four hour
care and supervision. Simin does not find satisfaction in the court
and so moves out of the family home leaving Nader to care for their
daughter and his father. As Nader must work, he is suddenly plunged
into a dilemma about how to care for his father, daughter and the
home without his wife to help. Reluctantly, he employs a devout
working class woman, Razieh, from a distant part of town who needs
to bring her own young daughter with her as she takes on the role
of housekeeper and carer for Nader’s father. Razieh is desperate
for money as her husband has lost his job and she finds herself
haggling to negotiate her wages as Nader tries to pay her as little
as he can. Both finally reach an agreement and Razieh gets the job,
however she is not wholly prepared for what the job actually
involves. A Separation presents an interesting dilemma for
Razieh as she suddenly encounters the need to give intimate
personal care to Nader’s father after an episode of incontinence
whilst still obeying her religious guidelines. Razieh, unsure of
how to proceed, decides to phone her Imam to consult on whether she
can go ahead and change the elderly man in her role as his
carer.

At this point the scene is set for the main theme
of the film to be developed when a clash occurs between the
increasingly stressed Nader and his struggling employee Razieh, in
an angry spur of the moment incident, which results in both
families ending up in court. As viewers we are invited to be
observers of the evidence and to form our own judgement as we join
the studiously watchful daughter Termeh as she tries to work out
whether her father is telling the truth or not. Termeh is forced to
learn a lot more about the complexities of the adult world than she
would wish at her age. I do not want to reveal any more details
about the plot because this is a film to watch without preformed
ideas. As it unfolds, it invites viewers to reach their own
conclusions about all of the major characters within the drama.

Relevance to the field of Mental Health

This film cleverly involves the viewer from its outset as an
observer and a judge of what is right or wrong in a variety of
different situations. It poses more questions than it gives us
answers and invites us to decide where we stand on a range of
familiar and unfamiliar issues, given that the film is set in Iran,
which is a theocracy. From the opening scene in the Iranian
courtroom when both Nader and Simin put their case to camera, in
lieu of the judge, we are intimately involved in the dilemmas of
all of the main characters. Attempting to understand the struggles
that other people are having in their lives, separating truth from
untruth in people’s accounts, and identifying which events have
acted as triggers for an episode of mental ill health, are often at
the core of our work in psychiatry and psychotherapy assessments
and can be especially challenging in our increasingly multicultural
society. A Separation offers an incredibly rich experience
that shows us the universality of suffering and mental turmoil in a
culture that may be unfamiliar to many non-Iranian viewers. The
effect of parental separation on an eleven year-old girl,
brilliantly portrayed here, and the strain within a family of
caring for an elderly relative suffering from dementia, are shown
to be no different in this Muslim middle class family than in one
beyond Iran.

As a platform for discussion about the effects of
stressful life events on mental health and well being, A
Separation is compelling from beginning to end and the
presence of subtitles is soon forgotten as the viewer is drawn in
to its excellent psychological drama. I would highly recommend this
film for anyone involved in working in mental health, especially
those working with ethnically diverse communities.

• More information about A
Separation is available at IMDB and
a short trailer is available
here.